A doctor dubbed 'Mr Covid' has begged the public to 'take coronavirus seriously' again, as he warned the number of patients in hospital with the virus is soaring to 'peak pandemic' times.
At the height of the first wave in April 2020, Royal Preston Hospital admitted 180 patients with Covid, many of whom were critically ill.
Now Dr Mohammed Munavvar, has warned he is seeing another dramatic increase, as the number of infected patients at his hospital shot up by 80 percent in just a month.
The Consultant in Respiratory Medicine told the Mirror that from June to July the number of Covid patients had gone from 20 to 162 with two thirds of those not fully vaccinated.
He said: "That’s a massive increase, more than seven times the amount we had a month ago.
"It’s very worrying, the only reassuring thing is we do not have many patients who are seriously ill with Covid and the vast majority have tested positive incidentally in hospital.
"We are still seeing a small number getting very unwell, almost all of them have not been fully vaccinated, some of them have not even received a single dose, never mind the booster.
"There is a very clear correlation between whether a patient is vaccinated and the degree of severity with Covid.
"Some people require oxygen but are not seriously ill, but we have had one patient in critical care.
"The rapid rise of patients means in the next few days we could be very close to hitting that peak or surpassing it."
Dr Munavvar, who has been affectionately dubbed Mr Covid by his colleagues on account of his expertise believes we are not taking the virus seriously enough.
He said: "People have forgotten a little bit about Covid and are taking things lightly. Covid is back, in fact it never left us, it’s still going around.
"We need to start taking it seriously again.
"My biggest fear is that we have been trying to play catch up with all the procedures and clinical appointments that have been cancelled.
"I want to be in a position where all our patients who had to wait for their procedures and treatments because of Covid will be able to go ahead.
"We have put a lot of extra staff on in an effort to catch up and I worry with Covid coming back there will be people getting infected and having their procedures cancelled again.
"We need to be able to continue the hard work and effort we have put in to clear the backlog unfortunately the rise in Covid infections is hampering that.
"The second thing I’m worried about is staff and the added pressure that will put on us with staff sickness.
"The staff who are already stretched and have been stretched for the last two years under this tremendous stress."
Dr Munavvar explained that while there are clearly less people critically ill with Covid in hospital compared to the peak of the pandemic, catching the virus still hampers their chances of having necessary procedures.
He added: "The problem is from our point of view as a hospital is that we can't continue with the procedures they need because of Covid.
"Secondly there is a significant number of staff off with Covid, we are doing everything we can to stop that and we have introduced mandatory mask wearing in all non-clinical areas again.
"We never stopped wearing masks in the clinical areas where there are patients.
"I have never stopped wearing a mask throughout the pandemic."
After contracting Covid-19 two weeks into the pandemic, Dr Munavvar was so fearful for his life he made last minute additions to his will.
He said: "I saw the first couple of Covid patients here in this hospital and got sick only a few weeks later in April.
"It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life, I was worried not just for myself but for my family and what would happen to them.
"I had to ask myself 'am I going to recover' because I saw so many colleagues succumbing to the illness.
"It felt like I was deteriorating, so overnight I updated my will hastily.
"Thankfully I improved after two weeks but it is easily the most terrifying illness that I have ever come across.
"My plea would be to get vaccinated, get a booster if you haven't already and keep wearing your mask, we still need to be vigilant."
